Training's Over
by S3ZHUR
Summary: A short story based on actual events, namely our outfits attempt at taking the Aurora Materials Lab on Esamir. Created as a writing exercise. Looking for critiques with the exception of story and setting as these are immutable with respect to the exercise.


The following is based on events that took place on the 31st of April 2013.

Game: Planetside 2

Server: Briggs

Faction: Terran Republic

Outfit: Special Operations Command Australia [SOCA]

I watched the plains of Esamir roll by through the window of the sunderer. Melted frost still lapped at the edges of the pane, liquefied by the heat radiating from the cabin and whipped into tiny waves by the wind racing across it. An endless vista of white and grey lay beyond my glass portal, divided in two by a road of reflected blue light that drew my gaze to the morning sun which hovered, pale and lifeless just beyond the reach of the horizon.

Like myself, the rest of the men in Alpha squad were silent, staring through the windows. We had been instructed to keep comms clear, though I doubt anyone felt much like talking anyway.

We had just finished fire and movement exercises in the virtual reality simulator and now we were headed to the Aurora Materials Lab to put that training into practice and return the facility to Terran Republic control. We understood the task at hand and the issuing of orders was the only talking that needed to be done now.

The steely whine of the break pads and a sudden jolt that rocked me forward in my seat told me that we had reached our destination. We had approached the lab from the north using the tip of a range of mountains that stretched up from the south as cover for our two sunderers.

Corporal Caramadre's voice, gravelled and prematurely aged by cigarettes, clawed it's way through the bass reverberations of the sunderer's idling engine, commanding us to exit the vehicle and take up defensive positions.

The lads in Bravo squad received the same orders we did and all two dozens of us piled out into the snow and ice. We spread out and encircled our transports, careful to keep our spacing, just as we had been trained – if an enemy scythe were to do a strafing run over our position we needed to be sure that at least one of our medics would survive.

In truth, though each man now stared vigilantly into the frigid waste, we knew that the immediate area was clear. This was all perfunctory, an ongoing exercise to train fresh recruits like myself. Part of the exercise was a ban on the nanite respawn pods built into the sunderers - so if a man went down, he stayed down until a medic could reach him.

In a war where no one ever truly died, this lent a chilling reality to the mission ahead of us.

'All clear, Alpha, move up'.

Caramadre's barked orders were welcome. Ice had already begun to creep over the barrel of my T9 Carv and I was keen to burn it off.

I moved to the top of the hill without waiting for the rest of the squad and found a small hollow to wedge myself into, allowing nothing but my head and the smoky vapours pouring from my mouth to crest the rise. Just beyond my position the ground fell away into a steep slope that curved down to the closest building of the Materials Lab little more than seventy metres away. The rest of Alpha clustered around the apex of the ridge while Bravo had taken up a similar position one hill over to the west.

The compound before us was expansive, a group of maybe half a dozen buildings locked close to one another forming a defensive wall at it's northern perimeter, at the centre of which was the capture terminal, the target of our offensive. Gaudy purple banners emblazoned the sheer metallic walls, naming our enemy: Vanu. I really don't like the Vanu.

Getting in would be hard if they put up a fight, but right now the base looked deserted. Nothing but cold metal and snow lay between us and victory.

I was staring eagerly at the facility when my breath caught in my throat. It wasn't the bracing cold this time, but rather the sharp rising tone of a continent alert accompanied by a warning that flashed at the top of my heads-up-display. The meaning of the alert was simple and immutable; Esamir was under attack and soon all the armies of Auraxis would be here.

Sergeant Weaver's voice crackled to life in my headset. Strained with the weight of command, it cut through the chatter that had sprung up amongst the troops,

'Training's over...expect heavy resistance.'

A half smile etched itself across my face.

The Corporal picked up where Weaver had left off,

'Listen up Alpha, we need to move on the compound ASAP, enemy reinforcements are inbound. Take up position outside the nearest building, Bravo will provide covering fire.'

And then the words I had been waiting for,

'Move out!'

I rose from my crouched position and charged towards the compound, dry flakes of snow falling from my camos and swirling in vortices around my calves as I ran. My eagerness had won over prudence and all of Alpha was at my heals. It wasn't my place to lead the assault, but adrenaline had taken hold of my senses and more importantly, my legs.

I had taken no more than ten strides before the Vanu soldier appeared, slipping out from the shadows between buildings, a black mark against the encompassing white. I knew he had seen me before I had seen him and the cold fear that ebbed from this fact seized me, crushing a gasp from my larynx. I tried to pull my T9 to my chin, but that single, rote act distended through time and left me staring, helpless, as violet plasma began to bubble from the tip of his amaranthine rifle. A roar of gunfire from behind me and to the right broke my reverie. A hundred explosions sent a wall of metal and noise through the static air above my head and down onto the purple clad soldier below whose only reaction was to shudder violently and slump to the earth. After a brief moment of cognizance, warm relief burst from my lungs and out into the gelid air before freezing into a drifting cloud. Bravo got its first kill - the training seemed to be paying off. Now though, any hint of subtlety was gone and every Vanu soldier within the Aurora Materials Lab knew what was coming for them.

I traversed the remaining distance to the closest building with large jolting strides, the ankle deep snow grasping every footfall. Alpha took up position, clustering against the buildings ten metre girth, peering round corners and over the edge of the window that was unfortunately placed squarely in the walls centre.

The Vanu were aggressive but disorganised, the few that were in the immediate area moved towards us in small groups, no more than one or two at a time. All around me the explosive report of Terran munitions began to clatter through the air, hot shells whistling through the cold then melting their tombs in the snow.

I jostled around between edges, trying to find a good angle, trying not to get in the way of my squad mates, but it seemed that no matter where I positioned myself I simply could not get a clear shot at the enemy. Resigned I pressed my back against the cold wall so as not to add to the chaos that run and ducked and fired and reloaded around me. Looking up I saw that Bravo had moved from their station at the top of the hill and were now flanking the western-most building. I couldn't help but grin as I thought to myself, _we practised that_.

With Bravo in position the flow of Vanu troops to Alphas location swiftly ceased. I could hear bursts of fire and the fizz and pop of plasma rifles to my right as Bravo fought its way towards the capture point.

Internally I struggled with an urge to join them, to seek out the Vanu and tax their respawn chamber to it's limit. I wanted them to know my name. But I knew better than that, Bravo had it's orders and we had ours, besides, dissension would not be tolerated, that had been made abundantly clear.

Caramadre's voice sounded in my helmet, it's message a reward for my patience: Alpha was to be the breaching team.

There was a large building at the centre of the Materials Lab that housed the capture point on it's second floor which in turn was connected via two gangways to the western-most structure. It seemed Bravo's attempt to reach the terminal by assaulting the gangways had been stymied by the Vanu soldiers bunkering there. Alphas job was to flank them by way of the ground floor entrance and break their defence, their morale and anything else painted purple.

Keen to join the fight I hastily moved to the central building along with the rest of Alpha, all of us being careful not to be seen through it's waiting maw. We stacked up next to the entrance in an orderly line.

With the exception of a few last minute preparations, the compound had grown eerily quiet. Bravo had ceased it's assault, and like us, was now waiting on a single command. The silence that had marked the beginning of our mission had returned, the bedlam that followed that calm had sputtered out into a few final cracks of fire and smoke and now only the breath of Esamir could be heard. I tightened my grip on my rifle as the tension mounted. I had yet to fire a single shot.

Sergeant Weavers haggard voice broke the silence,

'Move in. Go, go, go, go, go!'

I remember this moment well.

I remember the deafening pop and high pitched silence of the flashbang that announced our entrance.

I remember stepping over the smouldering remains of a squad mate, still flickering blue with discharged plasma.

I remember seeing a man clad in curvilinear, purple and black armour, his hands replaced by clawed cannons, his head swept back by the arc of his helmet.

I remember choosing my target from amongst the dozen Vanu that lay in wait.

I remember firing my weapon.

I remember falling.

I remember watching snow tumble into the room carried in on the boots of Alpha squad soldiers.

Being revived by the nanite medic tool is a deeply peculiar experience. Respawning in a nanite tube is fast; black turns to bright, non-existence to consciousness. The medic tool achieves the same result but does so in degrees. There's no real way to describe the sensation of being half alive or a quarter alive, but of the sensations that I can recall, and describe, none is weirder than the taste of yellow. It's something like a mixture between mangos and ammonia, but much more...yellow. It's not a taste one can easily forget. I can only assume that as your cells are reconstituted and your neurons plugged back in, the brain is forced to undergo some form of boot up procedure in which the myriad systems that define the human experience are tested. At least this would explain the painful muscle spasms that spread throughout the body upon being fully revived. On this occasion though, as reality flickered back into existence on that cold facility floor, I was treated to the experience of having my right eye rebuilt and the transcendent shower of colour that produced.

A medic crouched over me; the nanite rejuvenation tool that had resurrected me in his right hand, the other stretched out before me, offering its assistance in helping me back to my feet. Only half conscious I managed to slur out, 'Tango mike', before limply raising my hand to his.

'Helluva thing ain't it', he said with a rushed smile before yanking me from the ground.

Barley vertical, I staggered where I stood as the medic darted off to revive another member of Alpha who lay in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. I tried to make sense of the dim room around me but found that for the moment I could only watch as it shifted and warped through varying saturations of grey. The battle had moved on to the southern entrances of the building; Alpha and Bravo had merged and taken up defensive positions from which to cover the numerous doorways and windows that gave access to the ground floor. The air was thick and pungent with the smell of ozone, a by-product of the plasma that had illuminated the room just moments before. Still wracked by ghost pains that burnt paths across my face, I realised that I needed to get to safety and wait for the after effects of my flash-death to wear off.

With slow and deliberate steps I forced myself forward and up the stairs, out of the line of sight of the doorways leading into the lower floor. At their top I found my sanctuary and leaned hard against the wall, trying to focus through the pins and needles that swarmed across my body, breathing long and deep as I had been instructed to do. The scene around me would have been grim in any other war; blood and gore was spattered onto the walls and floor and dripped down the steps of the stairway, pooling on the last before spilling over and trickling to the floor. Steam gently wafted from the viscous fluid and patches near the door we had entered by had already begun to freeze. The corpses of the fallen Vanu, however, had disappeared, broken down atom by atom and ferried away for reconstitution by the ever present nanites.

The sounds of battle continued to reverberate between the walls of the facility, allied soldiers dashed to and fro, protecting the terminal we had just captured. To me though, this all seemed far away, as though I were submerged in still water. Commands were issued and obeyed, but not by me. I just stood there, leaning against the wall, staring stupidly at a body that lay on the steps. I hadn't noticed it before during my laboured trip to the second storey, but there it lay, slumped awkwardly across the stairs. In my daze it seemed funny to me that it should be there, as though it were some great absurdity or perhaps a profoundly incongruous object, the kind that lets you know your dreaming.

As my gaze shifted lazily over the form of his crumpled frame I was struck by a sense of familiarity; the series of wet holes that had been punched through his armour from abdomen to chest were known to me, I had seen them before. Dimly at first, but with an increasing acuteness, I realised that this was the man I had shot. He had tumbled down the stairs a little from where he had been standing but there could be no mistaking it; my memory of those wounds was too fresh.

My head was beginning to clear, already the stinging pain on the right side of my face had dulled to a gentle throb and now idle curiosity pushed me forward to take a closer look.

I approached him cautiously but was still caught by surprise when he coughed a mass of blood onto the step his head rested on. The nanites were fastidious, they worked cleanly and efficiently, better than any carrion beetle, but they had one downside: they would only deconstruct a soldier if he died. Mortally wounded wasn't good enough for them and as long as a man drew breath they were kept at bay. I had seen this before, but never in a man that I had shot myself. As I've mentioned before, I hold no love for the Vanu, but no one deserves this, to linger on, waiting, hoping for death. I was drawing my sidearm to finish the job when he turned his head to face me, a smile on his lips. Just before I pulled the trigger he managed to gurgle out one simple word,

'Cya'.

I don't think this war is ever going to end.


End file.
